Trim down tool names in new plotting interface

[Martyn Gigg]

The new Python cli for plotting is nice and compact but I think a couple of the tool names could use a little bit of a trim down, e.g.

plot(ws, tool="plot_spectrum")

feels like we are unnecessarily repeating the plot word.

The current tool names are

• plot_spectrum
• plot_bin
• plot_md

How about just:

• spectrum
• bin
• md

?

This then fits better with the 'vsi' option for the new VSI plotting.

I am, of course, open to suggestions too.

[Federico M Pouzols]

Humm, actually there will be a new tool coming hopefully soon: 'vsi'. The change makes sense to me.

[Owen Arnold]

I think we should try to keep consistent with whatever matplotlib does.

I would say this however for prefixing things with plot. Not everyone is going to intuitively know what these new plot commands are going to be. For example, spectrum could be known as histogram, eventlist .... etc. At least prefixing things with plot, the autocompletion in say ipython, will show you what options there are for variations of plot.

[Federico M Pouzols]

The autocompletion point is a good one. That would imply tool='plot_vsi' for the new tool.

I don't remember anything similar from matplotlib. In that respect 'vsi' would be fine and 'plot_vsi' too, they use lowercase and _ between words, that's all we can borrow I think.

[Martyn Gigg]

Yes, the tool argument is our invention, correct?

Self-consistency is definitely the key here so keeping what we have would imply 'plot_vsi' would be the new tool name/function name. I take the point about autocompletion and keeping the vocabulary the same so we can keep that but we should update the new VSI cli doc with the tool 'plot_vsi' name.

[Federico M Pouzols]

Yes, I don't thing there's anything directly comparable in matplotlib.

Ok, so let's call it 'plot_vsi'. This way the possible values of plot= are the names of the alternative plot_XXX commands.

[Stuart Campbell]

This ticket has been transferred to github issue ​11914